Shanda McManus

The Nuclear Power of Grief

Shanda McManus, MD, is a physician and writer whose work lives at the intersection of medicine, memory, and the stories we carry in our bodies. A North Philadelphia native who received her B.A. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.D. from Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Dr. McManus has practiced family medicine for over two decades and is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, where she teaches narrative medicine and humanism.

Her debut memoir, Brother Epistles: A Sister’s Memoir (Split/Lip Press, 2026), is a series of letters to her brother Monir, killed in a shooting in Philadelphia in 1992 while she was a first-year medical student. Braiding grief, memory, and the experience of practicing medicine, the book asks what it means to bear witness to Black life, grief, and survival from inside both a family and a white coat. Jacqueline Woodson writes that it will “grab your heart, hold it gently, then hand it lovingly back to you.”

Her writing has appeared in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Bellevue Literary, and other outlets. She is a 2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a 2023 Baldwin For The Arts Fellow, and a 2026 Hedgebrook resident. Dr. McManus also publishes Weatherproof, a newsletter on Black women’s health and healing. She believes storytelling is its own kind of medicine.